Who We Are & What We Do

Window Seat is a community of multimedia storytellers in the South Puget Sound who use story as a catalyst for conversation, connection and change. We are especially committed to weaving the stories that have been forgotten, silenced, or ignored into the fabric of our public life. We do this because we believe we write our future with the stories we narrate, and we are committed to helping to create an inclusive, connected, and just world.

Oral history and personal narrative are at the center of our work. We experiment with a variety of formats - live storytelling, theater, community conversations, podcasts, film screenings, exhibits, and more - to amplify local knowledge, share powerful ideas, and ask what is possible. We carry out our work in three primary ways:

• We teach workshops in nonprofit storytelling, media literacy and oral history to support community engagement and local change-making;
• We offer multimedia storytelling services to raise awareness and funds;
• ‍We curate community oral history and storytelling projects to elevate local knowledge, share powerful ideas, and ask what is possible

Our work is both highly collaborative and experimental. We love finding points of intersection with others to increase our collective impact through collaborative oral history projects and initiatives in the South Puget Sound. We have one paid part-time staff, who is also the founder, and many collaborators (both paid and volunteer) who bring their unique skills to help further our mission. Our collaborators include multimedia storytellers, artists, academics, community organizers, and community organizations.

Our Values + Practice

Window Seat Media is a worker self-directed nonprofit with shared leadership. We are a nimble organization that thrives on synergy, abundance thinking, and experimentation. We value relationships (human and place-based),multi-disciplinary collaboration, multi-vocality, equity, transparency, and trust.

Storytelling is a vital part of human life, and there are many ways that community storytelling projects can nourish, heal, and strengthen our communal life. We are guided by a commitment to continually refine our practice, to listen deeply, and to find relevant, innovative, and evocative ways to share stories. We aspire to gather and share nuanced, layered stories with artistic and ethical integrity. We also understand that stories are told not only through words, but also through all our oral traditions, including the food we grow and prepare, the music we make and dances we perform, our handicrafts, and our traditions and rituals.

We consider ourselves stewards of other peoples’ stories. We do not own the copyright to the stories we gather and we never share a story without the person's feedback and ongoing consent. Our work is informed by best practices from the American Folklore Society and the Oral History Association.